Barefoot Networks Begins Transformation of Technology Industry by Achieving Production Qualification of Tofino™ in Record Time

Multiple Customer Trials Completed with Barefoot Tofino™ Programmable Ethernet Switch Family of ASICs, Now Deploying in Large Scale Production

BEIJING, CHINA--(Marketwired - Nov 27, 2017) - The largest technology companies globally have begun deploying Barefoot's Tofino into their networks this quarter, gaining much needed new features and functions, performance and scale, and real-time visibility. Several customers, including Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., Baidu Inc. and Tencent Holding Ltd., have completed evaluating Tofino for their respective use cases and found that Tofino delivers on its promise of programmability without compromise on performance, power or price.

Sampling since Q4 2016, Barefoot's Tofino family of P4-programmable switches have been successfully tested by enterprise, service provider, data center, and OEM customers. Network operators today seek more control over the data traveling on their networks. Tofino, along with P4, is giving end users of the network the control they need to make the network an asset rather than a liability. With backing from blue chip investors and leading technology firms, including Goldman Sachs, Google, Sequoia Capital, and more, the company has quickly ramped its production and market reach.

"The ability to define the forwarding plane in software is enabling us to rapidly innovate and deliver new services in the network," said Liu Chao, Senior Director, System Department at Baidu. "Barefoot Tofino, along with P4, is solving problems relating to visibility and efficiency, thereby increasing the value contributed by the network to Baidu's business."

"We are excited to be able to take advantage of programmability at the forwarding plane in our network," said Tom Bie, Vice President, Technology & Engineering Group, Tencent. "We've evaluated Barefoot Tofino and found it to be well-suited for our needs of performance and visibility. We will continue to explore new use cases and are looking forward to having this technology provide a strong foundation for the evolution of our network."

"Barefoot has taken on a bold challenge of creating a domain-specific processor for networking with the same economics as a purpose-built switch ASSP," said Bob Wheeler, Principal Analyst at The Linley Group. "By using P4 as the programming language for Tofino, Barefoot has given network equipment vendors and operators full control to define the functionality required to create the next wave of innovation in networking."

"Since coming to market in 2016, the ability to define the forwarding plane in software using P4 and Tofino has triggered a ripple effect in the networking industry," said Craig Barratt, CEO at Barefoot."We are at the beginning of a major transformation of the networking industry enabled by the revolutionary technology we have created. We are pleased to see our customers complete trials in record time and begin to deploy Tofino in production."

Tofino processes packets at 6.5 terabits per second. This record-breaking performance and programmability enables customers to build the world's only fully-programmable networks. This allows network owners to specify the behavior of the packet processing devices in their network -- down to the packets flowing on the wire.

Barefoot Networks is presenting at the P4 Workshop at GNTC 2017 in Beijing, China on November 28, 2017. The event is hosted at The Great Wall Sheraton Hotel. The event includes talks by luminaries from industry and academia talking about the future of networking. Speakers include Timon Sloane, VP of Marketing and Ecosystem, ONF; Leo Chu, Chief Architect at Internet Harbor; Dennis Cai, Chief Architect at Alibaba Group; Guang Yang, Manager, Customer Engineer Asia, Barefoot Networks; Ed Doe, VP, Product and Marketing at Barefoot Networks; and Nick McKeown, Professor Stanford University.

About BaiduBaidu, Inc. is the leading Chinese language Internet search provider. Baidu aims to make a complex world simpler through technology. Baidu's ADSs trade on the NASDAQ Global Select Market under the symbol "BIDU". Currently, ten ADSs represent one Class A ordinary share.

About TencentTencent uses technology to enrich the lives of Internet users. Every day, hundreds of millions of people communicate, share experiences, consume information and seek entertainment through our integrated platforms. Tencent's diversified services include QQ, Weixin/ WeChat for communications; Qzone for social networking; QQ Game Platform for online games; QQ.com and Tencent News for information and Tencent Video for video content.

Tencent was founded in Shenzhen in 1998 and went public on the Main Board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2004. The Company is one of the constituent stocks of the Hang Seng Index. Tencent seeks to evolve with the Internet by investing in innovation, providing a mutually beneficial environment for partners, and staying close to users. For more information, visit http://www.tencent.com

About Barefoot NetworksBarefoot Networks launched in 2016 after two years of developing the most programmable and -- at 6.5Terabits/second -- the fastest switches ever built; twice as fast as the previous on record. By enabling organizations to define the network forwarding plane in software, Barefoot empowers network owners and their infrastructure partners to design, optimize, and innovate to meet their specific requirements and gain competitive advantage. In combining the P4 programming language with fast programmable switches, Barefoot has also created an ecosystem for compilers, tools, and P4 programs to make P4 accessible to anybody. Barefoot's founders -- Pat Bosshart, Martin Izzard, Dan Lenoski, Nick McKeown -- brought to the company more than 100 years of experience in building the fastest and biggest networking systems in the world. Backed by Google Inc., Goldman Sachs Principal Strategic Investments, Alibaba, Tencent, Hewlett Packard Ventures, Dell Technologies Capital and by premier venture capital firms Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Andreessen Horowitz, Barefoot Networks is headquartered in Silicon Valley. For more information, visit http://www.barefootnetworks.com. Follow us on social media:
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Barefoot Networks, the Foot Logo and Tofino are trademarks of Barefoot Networks.